The Hong Kong Public Records Office offers an online catalogue to their 'Archives for Still and Moving Images'. There are over 8,000 images in the archive.

The Hong Kong Public Library also has a good online search for old photos. The photos can be viewed and downloaded in high-resolution (though with the library's logo on the picture), which means they can be cleaned up well in an image editor. [3-Oct-2008: For me this site only works with Internet Explorer, not Firefox. When you click the link you should see a search screen. If you don't, check the opening hours as the service closes at different times for maintenance.]

Hedda Morrison took several hundred photos of Hong Kong in 1946-7. Over 300 of these photos have been scanned at high-resolution and placed online in Harvard University's VIA system. VIA's viewer allows you to zoom in to see a high level of detail.
To see the photos:
- Visit the Via website at: http://via.lib.harvard.edu/via/deliver/advancedsearch?_collection=via
- In the "Search for: " section, type hedda morrison in the first box and hong kong in the second. Choose Place from the second drop-down list. It should look like this:

- Click the 'Search' button
- You should see "Search results: 1 to 15 of 309 hits from the search hedda morrison in (Anywhere) and hong kong in (Place)", followed by a list of photos
- Click any photo to see its 'Full record'
- On the Full record page, double click the image to open the viewer, which lets you zoom and pan around the image.
- NB if you want to give someone a link to one of these photos, don't just use the url shown in your browser when you're viewing the photo. When you try to view it later, you'll just see an error. Instead you need to double-click the thumbnail to see the full record, then look for the link 'Bookmark this item'. That's the link you can share that will work reliably in future.

The St Georges School website has a gallery of photos of Kowloon believed taken in the 1960s.

I was brought up in Hong Kong in the 60s and went to the Peak School and KGV. These photos were mostly taken by myself on a Kodak Instamatic and Olympus OM10 between 1969 and 1987. A few other photos were given to me and some slides were bought from a street vendor in the late 70s. I hope you enjoy this bit of nostalgia as much as I did compiling it.

If you know of any other sites with good photos of old Hong Kong, please add a comment below with the details.

I came across this photo album supposedly belonging to my grandpa (he was a keen photographer), once again one of many old things which I was able to dig out from my grandaunt's home. Anyway, thought you would be interested in this photo montage (is this the right word?) of various street scene in HK, quite possibly dating back to just before the war in 1940.

As you could see, there are some known locations, especially the one featuring what's currently a school/temple on Shan Kwong Road in Happy Valley. And those two pics of TST, any idea on the rooftop of which building were these photos taken? The rest I am going to have to leave them to you or for that matter other viewers of your website.

I've set the date to 1940 for each of the photos, but if you believe the date should be earlier or later, please leave a comment on the photo. I hope you can help identify their loction too - though bear in mind that they may not all have been taken in Hong Kong.

You can click the "next image" link to see the next photo in the series, and click the "original" link if you want to see a larger version of the image. Here is the first photo.

Over the last few weeks I've posted up over 200 photos taken in the late 1950s. Where did they all come from?

As the title for the album says, they are “Fred Evans' photos”. Fred is a family friend, who lives a few houses down the hill from my mum. She heads along there every week for Sunday lunch with him and his wife. One time he mentioned that he'd been out in Hong Kong with the army, and had some photos. The message was duly passed on to me, and so when I visited mum last year, we arranged for a time to go and see Fred and his photos.

I only expected to see a handful of photos, but instead out came an album. Fred had been a keen amateur photographer, and had taken several hundred photos while he was in Hong Kong. Of course most are of his army life, but there are also plenty of photos of the countryside, local people, and visits into the city.

He arrived in June 1957, stationed in Hong Kong with the 1st Royal Tank Regiment. He was based at Sek Kong throughout, sailing home again in October 1959.

As he talked me through the album I took photos of his photos with my digital camera. You'll see that some came out better than others – when they look blurry it's my shaky hand that's the cause, not Fred's! I also tried using MrsB's MP3 player to record Fred talking, except that ran out of battery half way through without me noticing...

But there should be a second chance, as I'll be visiting the UK again in February 2008. So if you have any questions for Fred, or requests for better copies of any of the photos, please let me know in the comments.

Readers Moddsey, Raymond and Oldtimer have already done a great job of filling in the background information about what you can see in many of the photos. I hope you'll add further comments if you have any memories or information to share. I also hope to persuade Fred to get connected to the internet, so we can hear from him directly.

The Univerity of Hong Kong's Museum & Art gallery occasionally run free exhibitions of old photos. They currently have an exhibition entitled "Early Hong Kong's Kowloon Peninsula", which runs until 16 Mar 2008. I went along this morning, and enjoyed it. The photos cover the late 1800's up til the 1960's, and include many of the areas we've looked at in photos here.

MrB

PS Raymond, several of Kowloon's old cinemas are shown, so you may be interested in visiting.

It is not that often that one sees pictures of people in old HK pics especially Westerners. I've come across a couple of links from Flickr that shows a French family living in Chatham Rd. Kowloon around 1910.

Marie-Félicité Grandel (1870-1950) , husband Jean-Baptiste Jules Semichon (1867-1915) plus two daughters and an amah. Very nice pictures from old glass plates. All together 28 shots. Quite animated too which is also unusual for photos from the Victorian/Edwardian era.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjacques/sets/72157594150897836/And if one should peruse further in the relevant sets of photos then one can see pictures that were taken before the family moved out to HK as well as pictures taken after they had moved back to France (to a place called Clamart). The link is posted here below.

The 'Historical Photographs of China' site has a large collection of photographs, including many from the G. Warren Swire collection. Many of his photos are work-related, documenting Butterfield & Swire's operations around China. So expect lots of photos of ships and dockyards, but there are some interesting photos of general Hong Kong scenes too.

The other collections at that site also include a few photos of Hong Kong, so I found the easiest way to see all the Hong Kong photos is:

- Click 'All images' from the Collections menu on the left

- In the top-right grey section, Set Nb/p to 100 Type Hong Kong in the first 'Text Search' field Tab to the next field and change 'In all fields' to 'Title'

you may wonder why I have not been back in touch , having promised you some more photos from the 1950s and early 60s.
It is because I cant find the things!
They were taken by my father, who now has altzheimers (in his 90th year now) and is now in a home.
My stepmother thought she had found them, but it turned out not to be, so they are still missing.
As she lives in Bognor. and I live in Bovey Tracey, we dont see each other very often.
It doesnt help that I am disabled.
My Dad had about 60+ boxes of 35mm film, that show things like the old car ferry(the only way to cross in those days).
I will attemot to find them again soon.
We lived there from 1948-1964. I still miss it.
Greg

Thanks for the update. I understand the difficulties involved, so don't worry if they can't be found. But we'll keep our fingers crossed that the photos surface at some point - sounds like there are some great photos there.

facebook - if you don't have an account - get one and join the group:
I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s
a great resource for old HK photos, especially from the 70s and 80s, as well as video footage (including a colour tram ride through HK from 1965) and a collection of 80s TV adverts

In 1966 Peter was in the Merchant Navy, and made several visits to this part of the world. I saw him on our recent trip to the UK, and asked if he had any photos from that time. Luckily for us he has 20+ slides taken in and around Hong Kong, and was willing to lend them to me to bring back and scan.

Here are the first few, dated September 1966.

Unfortunately at this point my scanner decided that it also needed a vacation. Once I've fixed or replaced it, I'll scan in the remainder.

Click on a thumbnail for a larger view, then on the 'original' link (you'll need to be logged in) if you want to see the full-size version. Peter says he'll add his memories of the photos, but please add your own comments to the individual photos (especially the two street scenes) if you recognise them.

I though that the PRO and the Public Library were the only government-run image collections. But here's another, as introduced by the AMO: The Museum of History's Online Catalogue.

It uses yet another system to index and view images, with its own strengths and weaknesses. First if you try it and nothing happens, which browser are you using? I tried with Firefox several times, but it only worked when I switched to IE (Internet Explorer). Even with IE, when I clicked an image thumbnail to see a larger copy, the pop-up window was usually blank. The museum staff say when this happens just press the F5 key, and the image appears. That worked for me.

If you can get past those problems, the search works well and there is a good collection of images, including many I hadn't seen before.

It's worth visiting their resource centre if you have time. (You have to make an appointment, but I was the only person there when I visited, so I don't think you'll have any trouble getting in). There you can use a much faster tool to search their photo collection, and can scroll through images as fast as you can view them. Much quicker than searching via the internet. It also seemed to me that the search in the resource centre shows results that don't appear in the internet search.

Mr B - I was looking through Mr Fred Evans' photos and wondered if my father Brian Colburn (also known as 'Butch') could have been in one of his group photos? As my father died 11 years ago, do you have any way of asking Fred if it could have been my father? Looking at the timing of Fred's service in Hong Kong they would have overlapped at Sek Kong for 18 months.
I now live in Hong Kong and have been trying to visit the areas where I believe my father spent two wonderful years.
I hope you can assist
Many thanks
Regards Amanda

I don't know if anyone has already found these but there are some photos on panoramio (i.e. google earth) from a chap called Alfred Mueller.
MrB - there is one of the KCR terminus - not sure if you have already found this one or not?

HMCS Prince Robert saw the start and the end of WII in Hong Kong. In November 1941 it was one of the two ships that delivered the Canadian soldiers to Hong Kong. Then in 1945 it was one of the first allied ships to return to Hong Kong as the Japanese surrendered.

The main website covers the life of the ship Prince Robert. Here are some sections that are specific to Hong Kong:

The Corbis website is a commercial site selling images. The images are from professional photographers, and so are of a good quality.

If you use their advanced search, you can search for photos taken in a certain location during a given range of years.

eg a search for photos taken in Hong Kong between 1850-1960 returns 96 images. Unfortunately it looks as though not all photos have a date set. Those won't show in a date-search like the example I used.

I had used the HKPL image search for old HK pics and had landed on some good pics of Robinson Rd and Caine Rd - thanks Mr B for his tips on using IE rather than Firefox. Yet, no such luck with PRO. What is the secret? What should I fill in for each box and what is the input format I should use? I am trying to search for pictures of Robinson Rd (really St joseph Terrace) in the 70's.

then go into archives for still and moving images, then into photographs, then click onto the photographic on-line catalogue which then gives one a search page. Then under keyword(s) search: type in Robinson or Caine or whatever, which then gives a host of records. However, not all records contain a digital image. Click on the black camera to the right of the selected records to view them. Cheers

Have fun! most seem to be taken immediately after the war though there's a number from 1948/49. some great shots of the city, happy valley, repulse bay, ruins etc. Also there's a great shot of Jimmy's Kitchen in theatre lane still bricked up against air raids.

In the original article I mentioned John Thomson, and linked to a gallery's website with a handful of his photos.

The Wellcome library has a much better collection - over 100 photos of Hong Kong from this period. Well worth a look. (Clicking an entry in the list will show you a thumbnail and some background information. Click the thumbnail to see a larger version.)